In his poignant documentary Remake, filmmaker Ross McElwee traces the joys, frustrations, absurdities, resilience and heartbreak that he has experienced, always questioning how he got here.
First, let’s talk about McElwee’s style of filmmaking, which centers on his filming his own everyday life. I would be annoyed of a friend or family member only conversed with me through a view finder, and McElwee’s family and friends have definitely been annoyed. McElwee has a self-deprecating appeal, as he shows us how he stumbles through his own life, as we all have done, missteps and all. Sure, it’s often navel-gazing, but McElwee is not the least bit pretentious about it.
When I stepped into my local art house in 1986, I had never before seen a film like McElwee’s Sherman’s March. McElwee, as a modern Southerner, wanted to make a movie reflecting on the impact of General Sherman’s March through Georgia in the Civil War. But his mind wanders on to thoughts of nuclear annihilation and Burt Reynolds. His sister scolds him abut his dating life, and his poet friend Charleen hilariously critiques his lack of game with the ladies.
Sherman’s March is a uniquely whimsical film. Shot and constructed in the same way, Remake is not.
Remake includes a lot of footage of his son Adrian, who was especially adorable as a child. But Adrian struggled as a young man, became addicted to drugs and was eventually diagnosed as bipolar. That arc turns any parent’s life into a rollercoaster, and McElwee ultimately suffers the most profound tragedy – the death of his son.
Remake also chronicles joyful child-raising, the breakup of a marriage, the gift of a second love and the absurdity of Hollywood trying to monetize an adaption of Sherman’s March. Charleen reappears, with her unfiltered vibrancy intact, despite a loss of memory.
But it is Adrian’s death that provokes McElwee’s deepest questioning of what has often bewildered him. And he does so with the courage to face the unfiltered truth.
Ross McElwee is a treasure to American documentary filmmaking. After Sherman’s March, he went on to teach film at Harvard, and to make a few more offbeat films. His masterpiece, Sherman’s March, has been re-released. Do you need to have watched Sherman’s March to appreciate Remake? No, Remake samples enough of Sherman’s March so that Remake can be appreciated on its own.
Thought-provoking, evocative and Intimately personal (sometimes painfully so), Remake will be available on digital on September 8.